The Anglobitch Thesis contends that the brand of feminism that arose in the Anglosphere (the English-speaking world) in the 1960s has an ulterior misandrist (anti-male) agenda quite distinct from its self-proclaimed role as ‘liberator’ of women.

Monday, 24 January 2011

Today’s 20-somethings were brought up believing they could have it all: the high-flying job, the enviable bank balance, the perfect relationship. But as young adults in a recession, they have found that the reality is very different. For a generation raised on sky-high expectations, learning to compromise has brought them back down to earth, says 23-year-old Sophie Ellis...

When I arrived at Manchester Metropolitan University (decidedly not Oxford - RK) to study English (decidedly not chemical engineering - RK) six years ago, I had no doubt that after three years of hedonism, hangovers and hard work, I’d emerge a proud graduate with the world at my feet. I believed that it would be only a matter of time before I found a full-time job in my chosen field, made inroads into my student debts, bought my first house and forged a happy relationship with the man of my dreams. There was an unspoken assumption among my peers that this was our future – all we had to do now was sort out the finer details. The word compromise never entered our heads. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that life had other plans for us.

After university I took a master’s in journalism, thinking it would give me an edge in a highly competitive industry. But as the chaplain handed me my scroll in 2008, the reality of graduation was far from the fairy tale I had expected. The abrupt economic downturn had really sunk in; unemployment was skyrocketing alongside loan interest rates; graduates weren’t getting a look-in in the job market and the 100 per cent mortgages of recent years, which had allowed first-time buyers a vital first footing on the property ladder, had vanished. We were left reeling.

‘Rigid goals, an idealised trajectory and a world-owes-me-something attitude is commonplace, making many of today’s young adults demoralised, anxious and depressed,’ says psychologist Dr Cecilia d’Felice. Psychotherapist Richard Reid agrees: ‘I’ve noticed an increasing number of young adults coming to see me suffering from symptoms of dissatisfaction in their everyday lives,’ he says. ‘They’ve lost their identity and sense of direction as the jobs and lifestyle they expected have been abruptly taken away.’

Dissatisfaction is an understatement. Despite what our parents and teachers assured us, a degree no longer guarantees a good job. Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that almost one in ten of 2008’s graduates are unemployed, and more than a million under 25s were out of work at the end of 2009.

I’d assumed I would walk into my ideal job on a women’s magazine; instead, I spent the best part of six months filling in application forms for jobs that weren’t even remotely related to my degree. The rejection letters I received could easily have filled a postbag. I eventually secured a job as a television researcher in Leeds. I was lucky – at least it was in the journalistic arena. My friend Jessica, 22, graduated with a degree in fashion buying the same year as me. Eight months later she became so disillusioned at the lack of jobs that she decided to take a Postgraduate Certificate in Education to retrain as a teacher. ‘Teaching isn’t something I would have considered before,’ she says. ‘But I have to believe that I’m bettering my chances.’

For some, the brutal shock of unemployment in place of the promise of a fulfilling career proves too much to handle. In April, 21-year-old Vicky Harrison committed suicide. She had dreamt of a career as a teacher or a TV producer but gave up hope after more than 200 unsuccessful job applications. She was one of more than 450,000 young adults under 25 who claimed Jobseeker’s Allowance (Welfare) last year – a figure which has risen by 99 per cent since the beginning of the recession.

‘When we are young our hopes are in their most nascent and fragile form,’ explains Dr d’Felice. ‘They can easily be trampled upon – with devastating consequences to our self-confidence and self-esteem, as the tragic case of Vicky Harrison illustrates so poignantly.’

When I was born in 1986 it was a time of affluence, opportunity and promise; my mother, a single parent, had a respected and well-paid job in the flourishing IT industry and worked hard to provide a decent lifestyle for the two of us. She emphasised the importance of education and pushed me academically. I joined after-school clubs, took clarinet and piano lessons and applied myself to my studies. It seemed an obvious equation – working hard at school meant I’d get a good job and nice things when I grew up.

However, like many people who grew up in the 1970s, my mum had had a smooth transition into the world of work. She found a job with a large IT firm weeks after graduating, progressed quickly up the career ladder, bought a house and, by the time she had me, at 31, was established in a lucrative job as a freelance computer programmer. Her peers had similar good fortune – many had received full grants for university, signed on in the long holidays and graduated with no debt. They found work, bought property cheaply, then, as prices rose, made a tidy profit and traded up. As their children, we had the best foundations in terms of education, economy and ego. I had no doubt that I’d be at least as successful as my mother.

For the first time, we’re asking ourselves what we can do without and becoming masters in constructive compromise.

The media sold me a similar dream. Magazines taught me how to bag a bloke, add zeros to my future salary and become the best-dressed girl in town; and every US drama from Sweet Valley High to Sex and the City assured me that, one day, I too would be sipping cosmopolitans, flicking my perfectly coiffed hair and discussing my charmed life with my equally groomed, intelligent and successful friends. In short, my expectations of adulthood were sky-high; my sense of entitlement enormous. Nothing – intellectually, financially or emotionally, I believed – was out of reach.

Yet here I am, living back at home near Leeds – crammed in with my mum and her dog Louis. As we sit watching Location, Location, Location, I daydream about the small but stylish city-centre flat I’d envisaged for myself. I’m far from alone – one 23-year-old friend, who needs to pay off her student debt and is trying to save for a deposit on a flat, has moved back in with her parents, is sleeping in her childhood bed and adhering to a curfew.

My relationship has been similarly affected by my own lofty expectations. I have been with my boyfriend, albeit on and off, for more than five years. In truth, all our ‘off’ times were down to my concern that there might be something better out there. It’s awful to admit, but my reluctance to commit was because our relationship was ‘normal’. I felt entitled to constant declarations of love and devotion, 90210-style, and it’s taken me a long time to curb my cravings for a Hollywood romance that simply doesn’t exist. And, seemingly, my peers are having the same trouble adjusting. In a recent newspaper article, author Joanna Trollope chastised young women for believing in the perfect man.

She insisted: ‘People have to throw away this absurd Vera Wang shopping list which says that a man has to earn £100,000 a year, be able to cut down a tree, play the Spanish guitar, make love all night and cook a cheese soufflé.’ But growing up, all we saw were perfect men with perfect wives, whether it was on television, in a magazine or on a billboard. Even my mother advised me to settle for nothing less than the three Rs – respect, romance and ‘Robert Redford looks’. Ironically, she herself has never married, which should have been a hint that real life wasn’t like the movies. Slowly, begrudgingly, my generation is realising that compromise is key.

The upside to the gloom is that we’ve had to knock the narcissism down a peg or two and realise that we weren’t quite as entitled to the job, the house or the man as we thought. For the first time, we’re asking ourselves what we can do without and becoming masters in constructive compromise. For me, living in London just wouldn’t have worked. It wasn’t feasible to pay off my student debts alongside extortionate rent. Yes, living with mum is a compromise – for both of us – but one which, with luck, will enable me to save for a place of my own. And although my magazine dreams may be delayed, I have decided to give freelancing a go – it’s hard work, but the sense of pride I feel when I get a commission is something I wouldn’t necessarily have experienced in a magazine-office environment. My relationship is now flourishing too. We both make the effort to keep it special and exciting, and I’ve learnt that an ‘ordinary’ night in on the sofa beats overblown declarations of love any day.

Would it have made the blow any easier if my generation had known in advance that we would become adults in an age of insecurity and cutbacks? Probably. But that might not have given us the motivation to aim high. According to a recent poll, rather than becoming despondent and giving up, a quarter of young people still dream of running their own business, and 23 per cent of new graduates want to gain more qualifications in order to better tailor their skills to the career they really want.

SOURCE: UK Daily Mail.

This article is couched in terms of 'generational' experience but really, most of the issues discussed are relevant only to young Anglo females: ideal 'love', absurd career expectations and a total lack of self awareness. In sum, is this 'crisis' to do with generations or is it really to do with Anglobitch entitlement? In my opinion, it is the latter.

Sophie Ellis believes that she is entitled to a multi-millionaire uber-alpha male partner, a six-figure job, a house in one of the world's most expensive cities, a Hollywood romance - all with a 'degree' in a soft subject from a mediocre school that, frankly, anyone of normal intelligence could have acquired. The Men's Rights Movement often discusses the effect of female-headed households on sons, never daughters. However, the impact of an entitled mother prattling continuously in her daughter's ear cannot be underestimated. The only male presence in Sophie's formative years seems to have been her mother's dog - a fact that surely amplified the impact of this parental misandry ten-thousandfold. Her mother's '3 Rs' (Respect, Romance and Robert Redford looks) are especially disturbing - how many more young girls are being similarly indoctrinated by feminist mothers? Divorce and lone-motherhood must inflate female self-delusion to deranged levels.

Having smaller amygdalas, women are naturally more pliant to external influences than men. And Anglo-American societies continually tell women they are 'special', they are princesses, they are entitled to things by mere virtue of owning a vagina (our Pedestal Syndrome). But what happens when this absurd agenda hits the real world of work and commerce? Well, what happened to Sophie Ellis: such carefully-constructed fantasies collapse like a house of cards. Many Anglo females apparently hit a crisis in their early Twenties (the vaunted 'Quarter-Life Crisis') when they realise they are not princesses strolling about a magic kingdom. The mass media aimed at Anglo-American women are all characterised by a relentless, homosocial narcissism, hammering home the message that they are 'special' and entitled to a personal pedestal. Because men are comparatively autonomous, free-thinking individuals governed by instinct, such messages have little purchase on them. But for women they are 'Holy Writ' and only 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' can prise such fantasies from them.

The article also raises questions about the state of Anglo-American education. Women now take up most college places, but what do they study? Usually 'Mickey Mouse' subjects like the humanities and liberal arts - seldom mathematics, computing, economics, science or engineering - that is, subjects with commercial utility. The whole 'dumbing down' of western education into a race where everyone gets a prize and where inferior culture is applauded in the highest seats of learning inheres closely to the rise of feminism (can't upset a real-life princess, can we?). But the blunt fact is, engagement with commercial reality cannot be delayed forever. Employers need graduates in Peace/Women's/Media Studies like they need an investigation by the IRS. There is a place for the canonical liberal arts and humanities in education, but the prosperity of any nation depends on its commercial, technical and scientific skills. Of course, these unpleasant facts are overlooked in the matriarchal Anglosphere where 'degrees' in finger-painting are handed out like confetti to females best-suited to stacking shelves or child-minding (if that). The only 'serious' subject women rule is law - again verbal, non-productive and commercially irrelevant. Is it any wonder that the Anglosphere is headed down the toilet?

But all is not lost. The article's relative lucidity and self-awareness rings a bell of hope. Is reality permeating the Anglobitch brain, at last? It is surely too early to talk about the beginning of the end of misandrist gender-feminism. However, for many young Anglo females the message DOES seems to be sinking in that they are not 'special', not 'princesses' and that employers, men and the world in general do not owe them anything. By confrontation and agitation, all Men's Rights activists must drive that message home: its impact is proven.

Saturday, 15 January 2011

An interesting new blog called Gynotheory has recently opened offering a number of interesting perspectives on feminism, men's rights and the impact of culture on gender relations. Gynotheory discusses these issues from a post-modern vantage, refusing to inhere to any one analytical paradigm. I approve of this approach, partly because of its intellectual integrity but mainly because it remains acutely alert to culture - a hugely significant dynamic, in my view, one central to the Anglobitch Thesis.

The men's movement is dividing into old-style and new-style theorists. The old-style masculinists broadly want to return to 'conservative' values and extol 'traditional' gender relations, citing evolutionary psychology or Judeo-Christianity to justify these beliefs. The new-style masculinists - and I am one of these, as is the Gynotheory writer - derive our perspective from cultural analysis and consider both left and right to be equally misandrist in the Anglo-American context. Further, we are wary of invoking biological arguments such as sociobiology, since these can be twisted against men to justify anti-male discrimination, even woman-worship (a grave potential danger of Male Studies, in our view).

The distinction is rather like the distinction between Generals Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant - Lee was the last of the great old-style commanders, while Grant represented the first of the great new-style commanders. In time, I believe more and more MRAs will follow our new-style masculinism out of sheer necessity. Moreover, the old-style project is daily refuted by the simple fact that Anglo-American 'conservatives' are as anti-male as Anglo-American leftists - if not more so. As we know, this is because Anglo culture - being puritanical - is inherently misandrist, reflexively vilifying men as sexualized beings. Consequently, Anglo-American 'conservatism' merely restates the age-old 'gynocentrism' implicit in Anglo culture.

Let us consider the problems of old-style masculinism at length:

Errors PoliticalWhile Angry Harry is a brilliant writer and activist, his reflexive conflation of feminism with left-Marxism troubles me. Yes, many feminists profess a strong affiliation to the left but then, a good many of these adopt a rightist affiliation and revert to gender-traditionalism where it suits them - criminal sentencing and lifeboat priorities, for instance. Besides, there is little evidence that 'conservative' governments are 'friends to men' - just consider the British Conservative party, who promote misandrist legislation at every turn and cave in to feminist demands 'at the drop of a (top) hat'. American readers will of course be aware that the Republican party has no better record, tacitly viewing all men as abusive via VAWA while unthinkingly setting all women atop pedestals, whatever their conduct. The Conservative Anglo-American media - Fox News, The Daily Mail, The Sun - all are explicitly misandrist yet all profess a 'conservative' orientation. In short, the old-style MRA obsession with 'conservatism' is absurd, since Anglo-American conservatives are just as anti-male as leftists.

Culture, not politics, best explains the misandrist nature of Anglo feminism. Both the left and the right exist within that cultural context, and it is notable that both Anglo conservatives and leftists remain stoutly puritanical and misandrist. Both the left and the right view men as rapist louts who must be suppressed, while all women are victims who must be exalted. And this misandry has a long pedigree in the Anglosphere, as might be expected - it did not erupt in the 1960s. Gynotheory implicitly accepts this, focussing on the 'traditional' devaluation of males in disasters like the Titanic.

My issue with gynotheory's historical analysis is that it conflates all empires as gynocentric, which was actually not the case. In Rome, for instance, even aristocratic women had very few rights and the Empire's expansion was motivated by a masculine desire for wealth and self-aggrandisement, not any desire to protect women. By contrast, the Anglo-Saxon empires - first the British and now the American - fit his analysis perfectly, misandrist empires where men are expendable fodder to shield the rights of hyper-privileged Entitlement Princesses. The difference? Puritanism - the Anglo-Americans have it, the Romans did not.

Errors ScientificEvolutionary psychology is a powerful modern paradigm, especially in tandem with the more rigorous science of genetics. However, it is fraught with danger for masculinists to extol evolutionary psychology as their only working paradigm, partly because it precludes socio/cultural dynamics but also because it can be used to legitimate female advantage.

For example, it is certainly a fact that men are viewed as more expendable in most western nations. Evolutionary psychology can partly explain this - a small number of survivor males can re-stock a ravaged community, while a similar group with few females will die out. However, the presence of such misandry in modern civilization might be partly the result of social complexity processes embedding archaic mores in modern contexts. Besides, cultural factors also play a part - in the anglosphere, a female must also be white, young, upper middle-class, Anglo and virginal to be fully bewailed by the Anglo media (i.e. Madeleine McCann). None of those things are 'biological' factors as such - all are cultural.

It is also notable that Evolutionary Psychology tends to be an Anglo-Saxon discipline, and thus strongly inflected with puritanical and gynocratic Anglo values. In my two previous posts I posited an alternative interpretation of evolutionary history to explain the inchoate nature of female sexuality - and predictably drew flak from Anglo numb-skulls trying to impose matriarchal values on the slaughterhouse of prehistory. In short, the Darwinian paradigm can be interpreted in many ways, depending on the culture of the interpreter, and not all these interpretations accord with Anglo gynocentrism. To patriarchal Asiatics, for whom the rule of 'strong men' like Tamerlane and Stalin has been the norm, female mate-selection seems a rather more ephemeral force than it does to Anglo-Saxons.

Ultimately, the very fact that Evolutionary Psychology exists as a science shows men can transcend our biological programming - or at least regard it as rational outsiders. Were it not the case, there would be no men's movement the question the manifold injustices men experience. The better Game writers all acknowledge this conceptual self-transcendence, promoting a mocking, post-modern detachment from their own activities. If we just accepted that all men are expendable and all women are angels, why are we bothering to be MRAs? We would just accede to the misandrist propaganda and become manginas like Tommy Fleming and David Futrelle. The fact that we don't proves the limits of evolutionary psychology. Post-feminist women have in any case reneged on their primary biological function (child-bearing), creating an entirely new social compact beyond the scope of Darwinian thought. The New-Style MRA programme is a supra-biological response to supra-biological conditions: we can do no other.

Errors ExistentialOld-Style MRAs hold a delusional view of feminism. They broadly believe it can and will be 'rolled back' to be replaced by an archaic patriarchy where all men are respected and allowed to reproduce sans Game or sperm banks. All this is juvenile thinking. Societies are complex entities ruled by non-linear processes that are effectively irreversible. Female contraception, careers and 'rights' will never be rescinded and any assumption that they will is naive and adolescent. Given this reality, invoking 'conservatism' and unqualified biological determinism are potentially dangerous, lending support to the 'rights plus privileges' agenda that women already enjoy.

What really impressed me about the Gynotheory blog is the author's implicit acceptance of the new conditions. Most men have no reason to be chivalrous in the modern context; invoking traditional chivalry in an era when most men are third class citizens is a suicidal project. Instead, the author calls for western men to build a new lifestyle that negotiates the whirlpools of misandrist gender-feminism while retaining fidelity to masculine objectivity and independence. As T S Eliot wrote in the wake of the First World War (a specific disaster for western manhood), 'these fragments I have shored against my ruins'. This is surely a commendable approach and one which will bear much fruit in the longer term.

While we are discussing blogs, I really like the turn Scarecrow's Men-Factor blog is taking. Dick Masterson taught the manosphere that humour could be a devastating weapon in the fight against misandrist gender-feminism and Men-Factor has certainly taken that lesson to heart. In the presence of humour a fool understands her stupidity instantly, partly because humour elides exposition while demanding considerable 'deconstructive' prowess on the part of the reader/viewer.

Feminists (and women generally) lack the capacity for sophisticated humour, partly because of the lower female median IQ but also because of their crass inability to think 'outside the box' - a by-product of their miniscule amygdalas. The images on that blog are worthy of Monty Python and have clearly upset the witless Peter Futrelle with their puckish drollery.

Friday, 14 January 2011

Throughout his thirty-odd books on subjects as varied as ideal marriage partners, Nietzschean philosophy, private property, the sculptor Rodin and elitism, the penetrating and well-informed Ludovici always lays his cards on the table. Every page he wrote sparkles with incandescent ideas that stimulate debate.

Virtually alone among Western thinkers, Anthony M. Ludovici unravels the sickness afflicting modern art; argues that men should never have given the vote to women; and discusses the evolutionary ethics that mankind needs for survival in a hostile universe.

Perhaps Ludovici's favourite among his many subjects was the relationship between the sexes. He treated it in over a dozen works of fiction and non-fiction, arguing that men differ sharply from women in their psychological make-up.

Most of Ludovici's ideas and arguments are eerily relevant today. He touches on such perennial issues as: -

- Why 'boyish' women are the Anglo ideal (this preference derives from the homoerotic undercurrent in Anglo culture, NOT 'patriarchy' as feminists aver).- Why Anglo feminists, NOT men, are misogynists (an entirely obvious observation).- The influence of Anglo puritanism on gender-relations (Anglo repression leads to the absurd idealization of women so widespread among Anglo males).- Why anti-feminists are NOT misogynists (entirely self-evident: it is FEMINISTS who hate femininity and - by implication - women).

Sunday, 2 January 2011

Game assumes that women evolved sexual preferences for alpha males (however defined). Unfortunately, this argument assumes that female choice actually mattered for most of human history. However, if men's actions alone decided reproductive outcomes, women simply could not evolve advanced sexual preferences. My recent reading supports the argument that female opinion or choice exerted little or no effect on reproductive outcomes, leaving Game a largely peripheral strategy for achieving sexual success. The whole Sexy Son argument underpinning Game is largely neutralised by the overwhelming evidence from history, genetics and archaeology. Let us proceed to that evidence...

This article suggests that Ghengis Khan is the ancestor of 1 in 12 asiatic males, via conquest and harems:

GENGHIS KHAN has been identified as the most successful alpha male in human history, according to a book by an Oxford geneticist.The Mongol emperor inseminated so many women in his 40-year career raping and pillaging across Asia that he created a pool of at least 16m male descendants who today carry his Y, or male, chromosome.

British men are now being offered the opportunity of genetic testing by Oxford scientists to see if they have inherited Genghis’s “super-Y”, which conferred such power on its originator.

Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University and author of Adam’s Curse, a study of the Y chromosome, believes recent migration could have spread a few of Genghis’s super-virile progeny as far as the British Isles.

Sykes, who runs Oxford Ancestors, a commercial enterprise that analyses people’s DNA and traces their geographical origins, said: “Genghis Khan was probably the most successful breeder of males ever, and there is every possibility that men here will carry his chromosome.”

The Y chromosome is passed unchanged from father to son and, in the 13th century, Genghis’s empire stretched from Mongolia to Afghanistan, Russia and Iran.

Oxford scientists took samples of male DNA in 16 locations across Asia and found the same Y chromosome in 8% of the population.

The idea that the chromosome could come from Genghis appeared to be confirmed by the finding that it was carried by a third of the Hazara tribe, which lives on the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The tribe has always claimed to descend from Genghis.

The Mongol ruler was born into a local clan that had lost most of its influence by the time he was in his teens. He set about rebuilding a power base that grew into a 200,000-strong army of legendary brutality.

Entire cities were slaughtered while the Mongol hordes looted their way across Asia. But while Genghis allowed his commanders their pick of the material spoils, he demanded the women were brought to him for systematic rape or to serve as concubines.

By the time of his death aged around 65, Genghis’s empire stretched from the South China Sea to the Persian Gulf.

His four legitimate sons appear to have continued the family tradition of sexual excess and empire-building, as did two of his grandsons: Kublai Khan conquered southern China and founded the Yuan dynasty of Chinese emperors and Batu sacked Kiev and invaded Hungary and Poland.

Their dissemination of Genghis’s chromosome no doubt helped to make it the most successful in history, which is why it appears to be carried by more men on the planet than any other version.

Researchers have also established an apparent link between frequency of sexual intercourse and the birth of sons, which is why Genghis would have produced more male progeny. More boys than girls are born in the first year of marriage when couples are assumed to have more sex.

Other studies have found that frequent intercourse raises testosterone levels, increasing the chances of the Y chromosome being successful.

This link suggests why the Y chromosome is comparatively lacking in variance – Stone Age males competed violently for women, allowing only a small minority of males to mate:

A group of Linearbandkeramik people at Talheim, Germany were previously found to have died at the same time, probably in a massacre, and the authors were able to ask some searching questions of their skeletons. The isotope signatures of strontium, oxygen and carbon, which gave information on diet and childhood region, showed up three groups which correlated with hereditary traits (derived previously from the analysis of the teeth). In the local group, there were many local children but no adult women, suggesting they had been selectively taken alive at the time of the massacre.

This review of Jonathan Gottschall's The Rape of Troy, argues Homer’s Iliad reflects inter-male competition for women during the Greek Dark Ages:

His primary concern is with Homeric society, referring ‘not so much to Homer’s fictional construction as to a specific scholarly reconstruction of the real world from which the epics emerged’ (3). In his first two chapters he synthesises classical and archaeological scholarship to build up a persuasive case for reading the Iliad and the Odyssey as offering a reflection, magnified up to the epic scale, of the society in which the poems were composed. Crucially, this is not the society of Mycenaean Greece itself, with its palaces and treasures signifying rich cities and kingdoms. Instead it is that of Dark Age Greece, an impoverished world of small tribes led by chiefs more like the big men of other pre-state societies than the kings of most translations of Homer. It is a world too of pervasive male violence. In his third chapter, which draws heavily on evolutionary psychology and comparative anthropology, Gottschall argues that this violence is directed above all toward the goal of reproductive dominance in a polygynous society.

The next three chapters concentrate on the epics themselves. Chapter 4 points out the crucial significance of conflicts over women in Homer: the Trojan war itself, fought over Helen; the argument between Agamemnon and Achilles over Briseis that triggers the events of the Iliad; the slaughter of Penelope’s suitors, which marks the crescendo of the Odyssey. Beyond these specific fights over specific women, Gottschall notes the pervasive references in the epic to raiding for women and the culmination of the siege of Troy in the mass rape and enslavement of the Trojan women. Chapters 5 and 6 consider the premium on status among Homeric men and the ways in which the ‘mating preferences’ of women in Homeric society reinforce the culture of male violence ‘through an active system of sexual and reputational rewards to men with powerful bodies, combative dispositions, and courageous spirits’ (117).

Gottschall makes a crucial mistake: the mating preferences of women had no bearing on mating outcomes. Men competed for women in Homeric society, the outcomes deciding male reproductive success. Female choice had little to do with it. The strongest males would gather a harem of females and rape them. Simple as that. At no point does female preference have any influence on events whatsoever. As with the German neolithic massacre, men fought and the conquerors raped the women.

As it is complex and aimed at scientists, I present the meat of the argument below:

A lot of maternal lineages (mtDNA) also appear to be of Paleolithic origin (e.g. H1, H3, U5 or V) based on ancient DNA tests. What a lot of people forget is that there is also no need of a large-scale exodus for patrilineal lineages to be replaced fairly quickly. Here is why:

Polygamy. Unlike women, men are not limited in the number of children they can procreate. Men with power typically have more children. This was all the truer in primitive societies, where polygamy was often the norm for chieftains and kings.

Status & Power. Equipped with Bronze weapons and horses, the Indo-Europeans would have easily subjugated the Neolithic farmers and with even greater ease Europe’s last hunter-gatherers.If they did not exterminate the indigenous men, the newcomers would have become the new ruling class, with a multitude of local kings, chieftains and noblemen (Bronze-Age Celts and Germans lived in small village communities with a chief, each part of a small tribe headed by a king) with higher reproductive opportunities than average.

Gender imbalance. Invading armies normally have far more men than women. Men must therefore find women in the conquered population. Wars are waged by men, and the losers suffer heavier casualties, leaving more women available to the winners.

Aggressive warfare. The Indo-Europeans were a warlike people with a strong heroic code emphasising courage and military prowess. Their superior technology (metal weapons, wheeled vehicles and warhorses) and attitude to life would have allowed them to slaughter any population that did not have organised armies with metal weapons (i.e. anybody except the Middle-Eastern civilizations).

Genetic predisposition to conceive boys. The main role of the Y-chromosome in man’s body is to create sperm. Haplogroups are determined based on mutations differentiating Y-chromosomes. Each mutation is liable to affect sperm production and sperm motility. Preliminary research has already established a link between certain haplogroups and increased or reduced sperm motility. The higher the motility, the higher the chances of conceiving a boy. It is absolutely possible that R1b could confer a bias toward more male offspring. Even a slightly higher percentage of male births would significantly contribute to the replacement of other lineages with the accumulation effect building up over a few millennia. Not all R1b subclades might have this boy bias. The bias only exist in relation to other haplogroups found in a same population. It is very possible that the fairly recent R1b subclades of Western Europe had a significant advantage compared to the older haplogroups in that region, notably haplogroup I2 and E-V13.

Replacement of patrilineal lineages following this model quickly becomes exponential. Imagine 100 Indo-European men conquering a tribe of 1000 indigenous Europeans (a ratio of 1:10). War casualties have resulted in a higher proportion of women in the conquered population. Let’s say that the surviving population is composed of 700 women and 300 men. Let’s suppose that the victorious Indo-European men end up having twice as many children reaching adulthood as the men of the vanquished tribe. There is a number of reasons for that. The winners would take more wives, or take concubines, or even rape women of the vanquished tribe. Their higher status would guarantee them greater wealth and therefore better nutrition for their offspring, increasing the chances of reaching adulthood and procreating themselves. An offspring ratio of 2 to 1 for men is actually a conservative estimate, as it is totally conceivable that Bronze-Age sensibilities would have resulted in killing most of the men on the losing side, and raping their women (as attested by the Old Testament). Even so, it would only take a few generations for the winning Y-DNA lineages to become the majority. For instance, if the first generation of Indo-Europeans had two surviving sons per man, against only one per indigenous man, the number of Indo-European paternal lineages would pass to 200 individuals at the second generation, 400 at the third, 800 at the fourth and 1600 at the fifth, and so on. During that time indigenous lineages would only stagnate at 300 individuals for each generation.

Based on such a scenario, the R1b lineages would have quickly overwhelmed the local lineages. Even if the Indo-European conquerors had only slightly more children than the local men, R1b lineages would become dominant within a few centuries. Celtic culture lasted for over 1000 years in Continental Europe before the Roman conquest putting an end to the privileges of the chieftains and nobility. This is more than enough time for R1b lineages to reach 50 to 80% of the population.

The importance of male physical prowess in procuring sex is illustrated in the David Lynch movie Mulholland Drive. Film director Adam Kesher drives home to his mountaintop mansion to find his wife in bed with a low class, southern bad-ass. When he tries to deface her jewelery in revenge for his cuckolding, Mr Muscles breaks his nose and kicks him out of his own house. I recall an interesting post on Roissy's blog about the possibility of physical confrontation in pursuit of sex. The post and its responses ended in some confusion, with fighting being accepted as the only option in certain situations, however honed an individual's Game. Speaking bluntly, the schizoid, high-IQ males frequenting Roissy's Blog are certain to come off second-best in physical confrontations with embodied lower-class males (hence their confusion). After all, few middle class Anglosphere males have had a full one on one fight with another male since puberty, so 'fight' really means 'a beating', as in Mulholland Drive.

In sum, Game can be handily undercut by physical prowess, even in a modern context - let alone twelfth century Mongolia. Roissy and other Game experts persistently refuse to address this fact, a telling omission. Within a limited context, their prescriptions have value; beyond the middle class world, they have none. This is subliminally adumbrated by the British lower-class word for middle-class males: 'wankers' (masturbators). Middle class males are thus pithily denigrated as males reduced to masturbating by virtue of their limited physical prowess in intra-male competition for females. Doubtless there is truth in this assessment: middle class, intelligent males across the Anglosphere perpetually lament their sexual disenfranchisment before lower-class, animalistic sociopaths who 'get more ass than a toilet seat'.

If I were a betting man, I would say that Game represents 20% of sexual success, at best. Coercive male power provides the remaining 80% of variance, both historically and in contemporary society. As I argued in my previous New Year post, the evidence suggests that most women find sex revolting. This sexual indifference is exactly what we would expect if female sexual choice never 'evolved'. Never having 'mattered' throughout reproductive history, female sexuality never 'evolved' since there no reason for it to do so.

Males continually project masculine logic onto female sexual preference since male sexuality is eminently logical - men like youth, large breasts, small features and long legs because those are reproductive advantages. Unfortunately, females never had to evolve such clear-cut, logical preferences since intra-male sexual competition obviated such developments. In sum, female sexual choices are illogical because they lack any coherent sexual instinct - which explains the reproductive success of thugs, bums, retards and other male misfits and the relative sexual failure of the intelligent, articulate and successful. It also explains why most 'alpha' theories of Game are unsuccessful in practice, and often confuse sheer physical prowess for complex psycho-sexual traits like confidence and 'social-dominance'.

Though intra-male competition might have been harsh for non-warrior males, at least it ensured the relative fitness of human populations. For evidence of the genetic and social anarchy attendant on allowing inchoate female sexuality free reign, just look around any post-feminist Anglosphere society.